6/25/23 - East Tawas anchorage to East Tawas State Dock - Less Sun…More Rainbow

 

An evening rainbow 
Had to be bumped up in the blog order to become the pic of the day
Ironically, a Facebook memory from 5 years ago popped up this evening of a beautiful rainbow we had experienced on the Tennessee River on our travels

5 years ago to the day near Florence Alabama 
This treat was soon after a MUCH more stressful day of boating through some nasty storms
See….we’ve learned when to stay put
Or at least Renee has 😂 

We awoke to spend a tranquil few hours sitting on the aft deck enjoying the solitude of anchoring out.  Erik threw a line in the water with a piece of bacon on it; after all EVERYONE (even fish) likes bacon right?  It turns out that apparently Michigan fish are vegetarian.  Not even a nibble to get the heart going was obtained.   Looks like leftover meatloaf would be on the menu this evening! 

We sat and watched the gentleman in a beautiful, large sailboat anchored out in the bay with us go through an almost hour process of securing his dinghy to the boat after bringing his dog to shore.   He first used a winch/pulley system to lift the outboard gas motor off the dinghy and onto a mount bracket on the back of the boat.  Then he hooked the dinghy to a separate davit/lift system and got it lifted and secured.   Watching his process it made us grateful for our very simple dinghy that is quick and easy to launch and re secure.   If we had to go through all of that every time we wanted to use Trudge we are certain that we would be using it much less frequently.   K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid) is what came to our minds 😝 

Quiet morning on the hook

Pic from night before of moon above sailboat anchored near us
Gorgeous boat
Complicated dinghy/davit system

After consuming a pot of coffee while talking over upcoming days plans, making a couple calls to marinas and taking Riva ashore for morning business we pulled anchor at about 9:15am to make our long voyage for the day of a whooping 2.5 miles over to East Tawas State Dock.  With the weather forecast still showing rain moving in by early afternoon and lake conditions deteriorating for the next several days we were preparing to settle into a slip and slow our roll for a while.  

Before the rains started in the later afternoon we took the opportunity to ride to Walmart to get a few grocery items and small propane tanks for the grill.  We also stopped through a Do It Best Hardware to pick up some butane refill cartridges for the Thermacell insect repellent device we use.   After lunch we took Riva for a walk through town while stopping in at several of the many shops that are typical to most of these lakeside towns.  East Tawas has a nice selection of them as well as several decent looking restaurant options.  The marina is conveniently located just steps away from the main drag; directly across the street is a pizza shop and ice cream parlor.  We did our homework for later by stopping in to both the parlor adjacent the marina as well as the other local shop to scout out the best flavors for later enjoyment! 

Biggest and busiest store on the East Tawas main drag

Our big purchase at Ben Franklin
We’d been looking for a bath rug small enough to fit outside our master shower

By the time we returned to the boat, about 4pm, the humidity had risen making it as sweaty and sticky as we’ve been thus far on this years adventures making us happy that we’d fired up the A/C earlier for the first time since the trip began.   The remainder of the afternoon and early evening was spent relaxing while enjoying a movie on Netflix and dining on leftover meatloaf/mashed potatoes.   Another nice thing we discovered at this marina is FREE LAUNDRY (very unusual!) so we did take advantage of that by doing a couple of loads.

As the rains moved in, but during a brief break, we made the game time decision to venture back out on foot to make a bee line over to a local church that was .3 miles away to attend an AA meeting.  We met some more nice folks there and a gracious couple gave us a ride back to the Marina sins during the meeting the rain had picked back up.  

Relaxing aboard with a movie
Wondering who the handsome fella is sitting next to Erik in the matching yellow shirt is?!?
😝